GP locums are becoming increasingly frustrated by the new PCSE pensions portal, NASGP founders told PCSE in an email this week.
The chair also updated NASGP’s FAQ with new advice to members about avoiding PCSE Online.
Locums lost hours on pensions paperwork after PCSE Online dropped auto-fill forms and generated errors last summer. GPs were even mistakenly given access to colleagues’ pension accounts, a GP campaign group reported.
NASGP’s message to PCSE raised the queries from NASGP members about the new PCSE pensions portal, focusing on the IT problems, and highlighted its advice to members to stick with the old system until PCSE resolves these problems.
Dr Fieldhouse then requested an update on the locum Form B ’supplementary form’ capability.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, a GP locum and chair of NASGP, said: “Ever since the NASGP successfully campaigned for GP locums to be included in the NHS pension scheme, we have been calling for an improvement over the existing complex and often misleading paper forms. In fact, this was the main inspiration for us in creating LocumDeck, radically transforming and improving the process.
“So it is deeply frustrating to have a new system that appears to be causing more issues than the problems that it was trying to solve.
“Any system that people have to rely upon for their future financial welfare should be rigorously tested before implementation, and this has simply not been the case here. At a time when GPs are already struggling with the present, at a time when future retirement could be motivating them, we instead have even more insecurity. This is not good timing.”